Amsterdam (yet) Again

Dutch & Delicious

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Restaurant | "It may be Dutch but it wasn't Delicious"

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This week I was booked into my regular Amsterdam hotel on a room only basis because our travel secretary booked a prepaid rate. Each time I have breakfast, the hotel charge me something crazy like €25 which is ludicrous. Even at my greediest, I can’t do justice to a €25 breakfast. I was booked on the 9.30 fast train to Antwerp so I decided that rather than rush my breakfast at the hotel, I’d go to the airport early and get breakfast there.I wanted something healthy and the options were really limited. If I wanted a croissant or a muffin or a gigantic fry up, then I’d have plenty of choices but what I really wanted was a fruit salad and a bowl of cereal. My scouting around mission tur...Read More

This week I was booked into my regular Amsterdam hotel on a room only basis because our travel secretary booked a prepaid rate. Each time I have breakfast, the hotel charge me something crazy like €25 which is ludicrous. Even at my greediest, I can’t do justice to a €25 breakfast. I was booked on the 9.30 fast train to Antwerp so I decided that rather than rush my breakfast at the hotel, I’d go to the airport early and get breakfast there.

I wanted something healthy and the options were really limited. If I wanted a croissant or a muffin or a gigantic fry up, then I’d have plenty of choices but what I really wanted was a fruit salad and a bowl of cereal. My scouting around mission turned up a blank – that sort of stuff just wasn’t available so I opted for an outlet called ‘Dutch & Delicious’ where I’d previously had a salad with a colleague and not been too horrified.

D&D is one of the many restaurants in the landside area near to the train platforms. It’s close to the train ticket booths and the information desk, not far from Starbucks.
The first issue I had was that despite the area being really busy at 8.30 am in the morning, D&D did not offer a breakfast menu. All I could find was their standard all day menu of typical Dutch food and sandwiches. Had I been there for lunch or dinner, I might have been more impressed, but as a fishitarian on a diet who would ideally have wanted something fruity, there wasn’t much to choose from.

D&D has table service so I grabbed a table and settled down to make the difficult decisions on what to have. The waiter, who I found to be a bit abrupt and unfriendly, came to take my order. I opted for a smoked salmon roll and was offered a choice of white or brown bread. I asked for brown. I ordered a coffee and an orange juice, knowing that the juice would be freshly squeezed.

The juice came quickly in a plastic cup with a straw. The waiter succeeded in slopping some of it onto the table and whilst he looked slightly sheepish, he made no attempt to clean it up. He returned a few minutes later with my coffee, a small cup with a single small pack of processed milk and a Speculoos biscuit. I sipped my juice which was very good and waited for my roll. Then I started my coffee and waited for my roll. I had an hour to kill but the waiter wasn’t to know that and I sat at my table with my orange juice slop and my cooling coffee wondering how long it could take to slap a bit of salmon into a bread roll. It wasn’t like I’d ordered something that had to be cooked. I also got a bit antsy about not having a paper napkin with which I could have mopped up my orange spill.

When the roll arrived I was rather disappointed. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been as I got masses of salmon and not much bread which might sound like a bargain. Typically you’d expect to be disappointed by lots of cheap bread and not much filling but this roll was just completely imbalanced. The roll was a small soft brown one and when I tried to cut it in half, I could barely find the lower half of the roll. The excess of shiny, oily looking fish was bursting out on all sides. A small amount of sliced red onion and a lettuce leaf introduced a bit of variety of texture and flavour but I’d much have preferred half as much salmon, a bigger roll and a slice or two of tomato. It’s not so easy to work your way through a mound of cheap smoked salmon and I had to keep wiping my fingers on my paper napkin – yes one did eventually arrive with the roll. Talking of napkins, for some crazy reason the roll had been perched on top of a folded napkin which made it hard to cut the roll and left me wondering if they had so many napkins to spare, they couldn’t spare one to mop up my juice.

The bill for my breakfast was €13.65 made up of €6.50 for the roll, €4.25 for the orange juice and €2.90 for the coffee. Whilst it’s not bad compared to €25 for a hotel breakfast, I thought this was very poor value. It’s a shame that they don’t offer a breakfast range, the juice is a crazy price and the salmon roll was slimy and unpleasant. I’d previously had a pretty decent evening meal at D&D with a colleague but I’d conclude they’re not really set up to do breakfasts.
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Member Rating 2 out of 5 on July 11, 2013

Dutch & Delicious
Schiphol Plaza, Schiphol Airport
Amsterdam
020 6533203

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Toko Togo

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Restaurant | "Geographically interesting fast food"

Toko Togo Photo - Toko Togo, Amsterdam, Netherlands

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I spend a lot of time at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and over the years I’ve probably tried most of the food outlets in the airport. For a long time I was a fan of the sushi stand on airside, then I abandoned sushi and started using the noodle bar nearby. I’m also rather partial to seafood and have eaten at a couple of the places serving fishy delights. I hadn’t previously bothered too much with the landside restaurants but when I arrived earlier this week, I was with a colleague who wanted to take a taxi rather than the train, and so we left the airport by a different entrance than normal, and on the way I spotted a place I’d not seen before called ‘Toko Togo’ which was serving oriental food to eat...Read More

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on July 11, 2013

Toko Togo
Schiphol Plaza, Schiphol Airport
Amsterdam
020 5456061

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Hotel Casa 400

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Hotel | "Bleak House"

A little bit of colour Photo - Hotel Casa 400, Amsterdam, Netherlands

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I go to Amsterdam every month at least once or twice and if I possibly can, I like to stay at the Novotel on Europaboulevard. My latest trip didn’t allow that as the hotel was fully booked up for the Europa Cup final. We had to find somewhere else to stay and one of the secretaries came up with Casa400 in the district known as Amsterdam East. If I’ve been to that area before, I don’t remember it and nothing seemed at all familiar when we rolled up in a taxi. It’s handy for work as it’s just a few miles from our office in Diemen and the hotel website claims you can get to the city centre in nine minutes. Note the precision – not eight or ten, but nine. I assume that’s the time it takes for the train fr...Read More

I go to Amsterdam every month at least once or twice and if I possibly can, I like to stay at the Novotel on Europaboulevard. My latest trip didn’t allow that as the hotel was fully booked up for the Europa Cup final. We had to find somewhere else to stay and one of the secretaries came up with Casa400 in the district known as Amsterdam East. If I’ve been to that area before, I don’t remember it and nothing seemed at all familiar when we rolled up in a taxi. It’s handy for work as it’s just a few miles from our office in Diemen and the hotel website claims you can get to the city centre in nine minutes. Note the precision – not eight or ten, but nine. I assume that’s the time it takes for the train from the nearby Amstel railway station to reach Central Station.

The reception area is bright and airy with a really high ceiling and lots of big windows. The lobby is enormous and spacious despite containing a lot of furniture. Brightly coloured sofas stand in neat lines and a super large table that looks like something out of a library looks like the perfect place to read a newspaper or wait for your friends. Given the amount of space it was perhaps a bit surprising that the reception desk seemed to be squished into a small corner of the room with the staff almost falling over each other behind the desk. The hotel is laid out with an open air atrium enclosed within the building. This has lots of little green bushes on a terraced slope with a water feature trickling through the middle.

Our check in took quite a while because the staff were giving so much attention to each group who booked in. Free maps were being flashed around and pens pulled out to highlight what was worth seeing, where to eat and where to find the station. It would be churlish to moan that it took a while to check in when the staff were trying so hard to help other people.

The hotel has over 500 rooms and mine was up on the sixth floor. You can only activate the lift with your room key by holding it to a sensor by the control panel. This is not unusual in Amsterdam hotels. My room was a bit bleak and stark in décor. It was very clean and bright but I couldn’t help wishing that there was a bit of colour to relieve the icy appearance of bright white walls and white bedding. There was a bit of colour provided by the curtains, vertical stripes of brown and red. I found the window arrangements a bit odd because my room was looked into by students in a room outside and I found myself drawing the curtains rather than just settling for the net curtains.

Normally I’m pretty unforgiving about Dutch hotel beds but this one was excellent. As two singles linked together, it was very large and even more importantly very comfortable. One of the mysteries of Dutch hotel beds is that they’re often a bit short in a land where people are some of the tallest in the world. This was not one of those short beds, nor was it horribly soft as many Dutch beds tend to be.

When I enter a room the first thing I look for is the bag stand. I hate to have to scrabble around on the floor or spread my things out on the spare bed and I always go hunting in the wardrobes to see if I can find one. At Casa 400 there is neither a bag stand, nor a desk but the two are served instead by a wide wooden shelf that runs the width of the room in front of the window. Due to the lack of space between the bed and the ledge and the size of the provided chairs, I didn’t find this a suitable alternative to a proper desk and instead sat on the bed with my laptop (appropriately enough) on my lap, watching the television which – as is standard in Holland – had BBC1 and BBC2. Many will ask "Why on earth does that matter?" but if you spend as many nights in hotels as I do, it’s a real treat to be able to watch proper television instead of 24 hour news channels.

For those who want to be able to make their own picnics or eat in their room, the small fridge will be a welcome bonus but there’s no mini-bar. I don’t think I know anyone who ever drinks from the mini-bar so that’s no great loss. Wardrobe space at Casa 400 is very generous but I’m happy to live out of my small bag. There are both a safe and some kind of fan tucked away in the wardrobe though I didn’t use either.

I was quite impressed by my first impressions of the bathroom although I generally prefer a bath to a shower and the lighting was pretty awful. The mirror is heated which you’ll only notice if you steam up the room with a good hot shower but sadly the lighting is so poor that anyone who wears make up or needs to shave away their stubble may struggle. It’s also very unusual that the ONLY mirror in the room is the bathroom mirror. One of my colleagues said she dragged a chair into the bathroom and stood on it to check she looked OK. What I did like about the bathroom was the very wide vanity unit. I hate to have to squeeze all my gear onto a small sink surround.

We ate in the hotel in the ‘Circles’ restaurant and the food was really very good. The place is not as stylish as much of the hotel and felt a bit cramped but the service was pleasant and the food was very good. I had a bowl of the best tomato soup I ever tasted followed by a tuna Nicoise salad, although it was not the most authentic interpretation I’ve ever seen of this classic dish. Prices were well within what I expected for a hotel restaurant and the service was well timed.

I didn’t really enjoy my breakfast the next morning and felt it was well over-priced at €16.50 a head. By local terms that’s not an outrageous price for a hotel breakfast but I found the selection disappointing and the layout of the buffet was confusing. I enjoyed the fresh orange juice squeezer but the rest was very bland.

Our departure the next morning went smoothly with very little delay on check-out and the staff called us a taxi which rolled up very quickly. My room was €119 for the night plus breakfast which was a full €100 less than I was offered for my usual hotel due to the demand for rooms caused by the football. I’m sure a standard booking at Casa 400 would be cheaper. If you don’t mind being a bit out of the centre but still with the city in easy access, this is a nice, quiet area to stay and I would recommend including it on your short list but would recommend you don’t take the breakfast.
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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on May 18, 2013

Hotel Casa 400
James Wattstraat 75
Amsterdam, Noord-Holland 1097
866-539-8117

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WestCord Art Hotel

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Hotel | "Staying with SuperCow in the Snow"

Sleeping with the Cows Photo - WestCord Art Hotel, Amsterdam, Netherlands

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We recently held a meeting with thirty colleagues in Amsterdam. We needed a hotel with meeting rooms so we could keep the accommodation and the meeting all in one location. After many quotes from different hotels, we chose the WestCord Art Hotel in the north west of the city.The hotel is located on Spaarndammerdijk in the Westerpark area in the North West of Amsterdam. This is an area easily accessible from the city centre and buses 22 and 48 run from the Central Station (look for bus stop F) and take around 10-15 minutes. If you go by car, there’s a secure basement car park.I arrived by taxi with one of my colleagues at about nine in the evening. From memory we paid around €20...Read More

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on February 10, 2013

WestCord Art Hotel
Spaarndammerdijk 304
Amsterdam, Netherlands

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Restaurant Café in de Waag

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Restaurant | "On the way, In de Waag"

In de Waag Photo - Restaurant Café in de Waag, Amsterdam, Netherlands

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In de Waag looks like a castle with fairy-tale turrets but it isn’t. It is however very old and dates back to 1425 when it was built as one of the Amsterdam city gates or it dates back to 1488 when it was the city’s ‘weigh house’. Both can’t be true but both stories are presented on different parts of the restaurant’s website. Who knows which is correct? I can’t help thinking they should pick one and stick to it. If you want to find a combination of ‘old’ and ‘not falling down’ in Amsterdam it’s not so easy but this is one of the buildings that manages to pull that off. I don’t know who built it but you can tell they built it to last.Whilst its past might be rather less glamorous than a ca...Read More

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on March 14, 2013

Restaurant Café in de Waag
Nieuwmarkt 4
Amsterdam, Netherlands
(020) 422-7772

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